Fiction / Detective Best Sellers

Fan-favorite heroes Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers join forces on a deadly maritime case in the remarkable new novel from #1 New York Times-bestselling author John Sandford. An off-duty Coast Guardsman is fishing with his family when he calls in some suspicious behavior from a nearby boat. It's a snazzy craft, slick and outfitted with extra horsepower, and is zipping along until it slows to pick up a surfaced diver . . . a diver who was apparently alone, without his own boat, in the middle of the ocean. None of it makes sense unless there's something hinky going on, and his hunch is proved right when all three Guardsmen who come out to investigate are shot and killed. They're federal officers killed on the job, which means the case is the FBI's turf. When the FBI's investigation stalls out, they call in Lucas Davenport. And when his case turns lethal, Davenport will need to bring in every asset he can claim, including a detective with a fundamentally criminal mind: Virgil Flowers.

Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller AARP The Magazine – Recommended Summer Reading CNN – A Most Anticipated Book of August Bustle – A Most Anticipated Book of August Chief Inspector Armand Gamache returns to Three Pines in #1 New York Times bestseller Louise Penny's latest spellbinding novel You’re a coward. Time and again, as the New Year approaches, that charge is leveled against Armand Gamache. It starts innocently enough. While the residents of the Québec village of Three Pines take advantage of the deep snow to ski and toboggan, to drink hot chocolate in the bistro and share meals together, the Chief Inspector finds his holiday with his family interrupted by a simple request. He’s asked to provide security for what promises to be a non-event. A visiting Professor of Statistics will be giving a lecture at the nearby university. While he is perplexed as to why the head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec would be assigned this task, it sounds easy enough. That is until Gamache starts looking into Professor Abigail Robinson and discovers an agenda so repulsive he begs the university to cancel the lecture. They refuse, citing academic freedom, and accuse Gamache of censorship and intellectual cowardice. Before long, Professor Robinson’s views start seeping into conversations. Spreading and infecting. So that truth and fact, reality and delusion are so confused it’s near impossible to tell them apart. Discussions become debates, debates become arguments, which turn into fights. As sides are declared, a madness takes hold. Abigail Robinson promises that, if they follow her, ça va bien aller. All will be well. But not, Gamache and his team know, for everyone. When a murder is committed it falls to Armand Gamache, his second-in-command Jean-Guy Beauvoir, and their team to investigate the crime as well as this extraordinary popular delusion. And the madness of crowds.

A Wall Street Journal and South Florida Sun-Sentinel Best Book of the Year “A masterpiece”—LAPD detective Renée Ballard must join forces with Harry Bosch to find justice in a city scarred by fear and social unrest after a methodical killer strikes on New Year’s Eve (Publishers Weekly). There’s chaos in Hollywood at the end of the New Year’s Eve countdown. Working her graveyard shift, LAPD detective Renée Ballard waits out the traditional rain of lead as hundreds of revelers shoot their guns into the air. Only minutes after midnight, Ballard is called to a scene where a hardworking auto shop owner has been fatally hit by a bullet in the middle of a crowded street party. Ballard quickly concludes that the deadly bullet could not have fallen from the sky and that it is linked to another unsolved murder—a case at one time worked by Detective Harry Bosch. At the same time, Ballard hunts a fiendish pair of serial rapists, the Midnight Men, who have been terrorizing women and leaving no trace. Determined to solve both cases, Ballard feels like she is constantly running uphill in a police department indelibly changed by the pandemic and recent social unrest. It is a department so hampered by inertia and low morale that Ballard must go outside to the one detective she can count on: Harry Bosch. But as the two inexorable detectives work together to find out where old and new cases intersect, they must constantly look over their shoulders. The brutal predators they are tracking are ready to kill to keep their secrets hidden. Unfolding with unstoppable drive and nail-biting intrigue, The Dark Hours shows that “relentless on their own, Ballard’s and Bosch’s combined skills…could be combustible” (Los Angeles Times).

Lucas Davenport confronts an old nemesis, now a powerful U.S. senator, in the thrilling new novel in the #1 New York Times-bestselling Prey series. Lucas Davenport had crossed paths with her before. A rich psychopath, Taryn Grant had run successfully for the U.S. Senate, where Lucas had predicted she''d fit right in. He was also convinced that she''d been responsible for three murders, though he''d never been able to prove it. Once a psychopath had gotten that kind of rush, though, he or she often needed another fix, so he figured he might be seeing her again. He was right. A federal marshal now, with a very wide scope of investigation, he''s heard rumors that Grant has found her seat on the Senate intelligence committee, and the contacts she''s made from it, to be very...useful. Pinning those rumors down was likely to be just as difficult as before, and considerably more dangerous. But they had unfinished business, he and Grant. One way or the other, he was going to see it through to the end. ***READERS LOVE THE PREY SERIES*** ''The best Lucas Davenport story so far. The man has a fine touch for outlaws'' Stephen King on Golden Prey ''Sandford''s trademark blend of rough humor and deadly action keeps the pages turning until the smile-inducing wrap-up, which reveals the fates of a number of his quirky, memorable characters'' Publishers Weekly on Golden Prey ''It appears there is no limit to John Sandford''s ability to keep new breath and blood flowing into his Lucas Davenport series. This is a series you must be reading if you are not already'' Bookreporter.com ''Sandford has always been at the top of any list of great mystery writers. His writing and the appeal of his lead character are as fresh as ever'' The Huffington Post ''Sandford is consistently brilliant'' Cleveland Plain Dealer

An unsettling cold case investigation ensnares Cormoran Strike and his partner in a web of dangerous secrets in this #1 New York Times bestseller, the inspiration for HBO Max's acclaimed series C.B. Strike. When a troubled young man named Billy asks Cormoran Strike to help him investigate a crime he witnessed as a child, the private eye is left deeply troubled. While Billy is obviously mentally distressed and cannot remember many concrete details, there is something sincere about him and his story. But before Strike can question him further, Billy bolts from his office in a panic. Trying to get to the bottom of Billy's story, Strike and Robin Ellacott -- once his assistant, now a partner in the agency -- set off on a twisting trail that leads them through the backstreets of London, into a secretive inner sanctum within Parliament, and to a beautiful but sinister manor house deep in the countryside. And during this labyrinthine investigation, Strike's own life is far from straightforward. His newfound fame as a private eye means he can no longer operate behind the scenes as he once did. Plus, his relationship with his former assistant is more fraught than it ever has been; Robin is now invaluable to Strike in the business, but their personal relationship is much, much trickier than that. The most epic Robert Galbraith novel yet, Lethal White is "addictive, murderous fun" for British mystery lovers and crime fiction fans alike (Vox).

INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A December 2018 Indie Next Pick One of Kirkus Reviews' Best of 2018 Picks BookPage Best of the Year 2018 A LibraryReads Pick for November 2018 A LibraryReads Hall of Fame Winner Washington Post's 10 Books to Read This November One of PopSugar’s Best Fall Books to Curl Up With “A captivating, wintry whodunit.” —PEOPLE "A constantly surprising series that deepens and darkens as it evolves." —Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review “A spellbinder . . . another outstanding Gamache adventure... ingenious . . . what more could a mystery reader – or any reader for that matter – want?”—Maureen Corrigan, Washington Post Blockbuster bestselling author Louise Penny keeps readers eyes’ glued to the page in her latest “intriguing...and satisfying” (Publishers Weekly) novel about everyday life and ever-curious death in the village of Three Pines. Why would a complete stranger name Detective Chief Armand Gamache one of the executors of her will? The will is so bizarre and includes such wildly unlikely bequests that Gamache suspects the woman was downright delusional. But what if, Gamache begins to ask himself, she was perfectly sane? When a dead body turns up in town, the terms of the will suddenly seem far more menacing. “[An] intricately plotted escapist mystery.”—Popsugar Meanwhile, the investigation into the events that led to Gamache’s suspension keeps deepening. Most of the opioids Gamache let slip though his hands—in order to bring down the big-city cartels—have been retrieved, but there is one devastating exception. Soon, he enters a race against time to locate the deadly missing drug. As he uses increasingly audacious, even desperate, measures to retrieve it, Gamache begins to see his own blind spots...and the terrible truth that may be hiding in plain sight. “The ending is adrenaline-filled....This starts as a small-town mystery and becomes something grander.”—Kirkus Reviews

Published under a pseudonym, J. K. Rowling's brilliant debut mystery introduces Detective Cormoran Strike as he investigates a supermodel's suicide in "one of the best books of the year" (USA Today), the first novel in the brilliant series that inspired the acclaimed HBO Max series C.B. Strike. After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, creditors are calling, and after a breakup with his longtime girlfriend, he's living in his office. Then John Bristow walks through his door with a shocking story: His sister, the legendary supermodel Lula Landry -- known to her friends as the Cuckoo -- famously fell to her death a few months earlier. The police ruled it a suicide, but John refuses to believe that. The case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate designers, and it introduces him to every variety of pleasure, enticement, seduction, and delusion known to man. You may think you know detectives, but you've never met one quite like Strike. You may think you know about the wealthy and famous, but you've never seen them under an investigation like this.

"James Patterson raises the stakes to their highest level, ever-when Alex Cross becomes the obsession of a genius of menace set on proving that he is the greatest mind in the history of crime. Detective Alex Cross is a family man at heart--nothing matters more to him than his children, his grandmother, and his wife Bree. His love of his family is his anchor, and gives him the strength to confront evil in his work. One man knows this deeply, and uses Alex's strength as a weapon against him in the most unsettling and unexpected novel of James Patterson's career. When the ones Cross loves are in danger, he will do anything to protect them. If he does anything to protect them, they will die. CROSS MY HEART is the most powerful Alex Cross novel ever, propelled by the ever-ingenious mind of James Patterson, the world's #1 bestselling writer"--

"R" Is for Ricochet" by Sue Grafton is a mystery novel featuring private investigator Kinsey Millhone. The story follows Kinsey as she takes on a job involving a wealthy parolee and becomes entangled in a web of deception and danger. Grafton's detective series, known for its alphabetically titled novels, offers readers engaging mysteries with a strong and independent female protagonist.

P is for Peril is the sixteenth in the Kinsey Millhone mystery series by Sue Grafton. It is now nine weeks since Dr Dowan Purcell vanished without trace. The sixty-nine-year-old doctor had said goodnight to his colleagues at the Pacific Meadows nursing home, had climbed into his car and driven away – never to be seen again. His embittered first wife Fiona is convinced he is still alive. His second wife, Crystal – a former stripper forty years his junior – is just as sure he is dead. Enter private investigator Kinsey Malone, hired by Fiona to find out just what has happened to the man they loved. Enter also Tommy Hevener, an attractive flame-haired twenty-something who has set his romantic sights on Kinsey. And Tommy is a man with a very interesting past . . .

When Kinsey Millhone's landlord asks her to help deceased World War II vet Johnnie Lee's family find out why the military has no record of his service, she thinks it'll be a cinch. But she is about to meet her match in world-class prevaricators who take her for the ride of her life. When Lee's apartment in burgled and a man named Ray Rawson, who claims to be an old friend of Lee's, is beaten up, Kinsey soon finds herself on the trail of a pregnant woman with a duffel bag. Soon the intrepid P.I. is following leads halfway across the country and encountering another man from Lee's past—a vengeful psychopath. Stalked by a new enemy and increasingly suspicious of Rawson—not to mention running out of time and money—now Kinsey must steer a collision course to solve a decades-old mystery that some would like better left unsolved....

"Curtain" is a Hercule Poirot mystery by Agatha Christie. It is the final Poirot novel, featuring the detective in his last case. The novel is known for its surprising twists and the culmination of Poirot's investigative career.

Dashiell Hammett's "The Thin Man" stands as a pioneering work in the genre of detective fiction, melding sharp wit with intricate plotting. Set against the backdrop of 1930s America, the narrative follows the affluent couple Nick and Nora Charles as they navigate a murder mystery wrapped in a web of social intrigue and high society. Hammett's prose is characterized by its crisp dialogue and an unflinching realism that delineates the moral ambiguities of its characters, reflecting the disillusionment of the post-World War I era. The novel merges elements of both traditional whodunits and the emerging hard-boiled style, providing readers with a unique and engaging experience that resonates with its humorous yet poignant examination of human relationships and societal norms. Dashiell Hammett, a former private detective himself, brought a keen sense of authenticity to his narratives. His prior experiences influenced his writing, imbuing his characters with a depth that transcends the conventional archetypes found in detective fiction. Having contributed significantly to the genre, he is often credited with establishing the hard-boiled style that even today captivates readers and writers alike. His insights into human nature are reflected across his works, none more so than in the intricate dynamics of Nick and Nora's relationship. For readers who appreciate a blend of mystery, sharp humor, and richly drawn characters, "The Thin Man" is an essential read. Hammett's elegant prose and engaging plot will appeal not only to fans of detective novels but to anyone interested in a profound commentary on human relationships against the backdrop of a glamorous yet disenchanted era. This book is not just a masterpiece of crime fiction; it is also a timeless exploration of love and partnership that continues to resonate today.